2017 Spring/Summer Concerts

March 19 - Zealot Canticles with The Crossing

Based on Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s Twelve Canticles for the Zealot – a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the minds of fanatics – Lansing’s Zealot Canticles is a concert-length choral ‘oratorio’ for clarinet, string quartet, and choir. Soyinka’s texts and Lansing’s responses are universal pleas for peace and tolerance, yet they force us to look into the mirror and recognize the thin line between devotion and intolerance, zealotry and radicalism. A major work on themes that dominate our public discourse every day.

http://www.crossingchoir.com/events/2017/3/19/zealot-canticles

March 27 - Last Words with Ekmeles

Ekmeles reprises David Lang’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl passion, this time as part of a passion-themed concert also featuring works by Wolfgang Rihm and Schütz, with the Attacca Quartetperforming Haydn.

http://ekmeles.com/wp/2017/01/music-mondays-last-words/

March 31 and April 2 - It's Elementary with Lyric Fest

An eclectic program of songs about the natural world—earth, wind, fire and water— and featuring mostly American song, premieres two newly commissioned song cycles by Michael Djupstrom and John Musto. With Jonas Hacker, John Moore, Meryl Dominguez, Elisa Sutherland, and Laura Ward, Piano.

http://www.lyricfest.org/concerts/its-elementary/

April 14 - Passio with Bradley Hill Church

A performance of Arvo Part's Passio at Bradley Hills Church in Bethesda, Maryland.

May 12 - Canticles of the Holy Wind with The Crossing - NYC Performance

An hour-long magnum opus of Pulitzer-laureate John Luther Adams. Commissioned by The Crossing in 2012, the work has lived in our minds and hearts, awaiting its revival – a unique aural kaleidoscope in which four choirs surround the audience, their canons unfolding across landscapes of time, as the “wind” swirls magically around the room.

Fonema Consort presents two works of ambitious and theatrical proportion. Joan Arnau Pàmies’ Produktionsmittel I is performed by a solo flutist in near darkness as she explores the extremes of her physical and musical worlds. Pablo Chin’s (in)armonia: retratos for low wind quartet and two solo voices is the first four scenes of his first chamber opera, depicting the driving forces that motivate the artist to create. This piece follows the journey of Odysseus past of the fatal sirens (represented by the singers) against the backdrop of endless sea (represented by the winds).

http://www.fonemaconsort.com/current-season/

October 12th, 7:30PM at the Winter Garden@Brookfield Place in NYC - The Crossing - WNYC's New Sounds Live

The Crossing sings two classic works from its repertoire - Santa Ratniece's Horo horo hata hata, a meditation on the souls of animals, and John Tavener's prayerful Svyati in which the cello becomes a cantor for the choir - and add a substantial new work with a world premiere of Peter Wyer. His Song of the Human is an immersive sound installation that places speakers above, below, and around the main plaza of the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place, with The Crossing at its center.

October 22nd, 7:30PM at St. Columba's Church in DC - The Thirteen - Reincarnations

Reincarnations features a diverse and engaging program of masterworks new and old. Featuring the American premiere performance of Thomas Tallis' epic Ave Dei patris filia, Samuel Barber's touching Reincarnations, and the virtuosic and infectiously-fun I'll fly away by Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw. Don't miss this performance replete with choral pyrotechnics and electric harmonies.

http://www.thethirteenchoir.org/reincarnations

October 29th, 7PM at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - The Crossing - Canticles of the Holy Wind

The Crossing performs this hour-long magnum opus of Pulitzer-laureate John Luther Adams. Commissioned by The Crossing in 2012, the work has lived in our minds and hearts, awaiting its revival - an unique aural kaleidoscope in which four choirs surround the audience, their canons unfolding across landscapes of time, as the "wind" swirls magically around the room.

November 4th, 8PM at University Lutheran Church in Philadelphia - Variant 6

Variant 6 collaborates with members of Philadelphia's own chamber ensemble, Prometheus in a performance of Arvo Part's Stabat Mater. Other pieces include contemporary SATB vocal works, by composers Bruno Bettinelli, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, and James MacMillan.

November 27th, 5PM at Trinity Lutheran Church - Bach Vespers

December 4th, 7:30PM at The Falls Church in Virginia - The Thirteen - Snow on Snow

Celebrate the Christmas story with The Thirteen through English-language works fromt he 15th century through the present day. Including works by Howells, Todd, Byrd, Tye, Elder, Britten, Walton, Gibbons, Willan, and more!

October 8th and 9th - Roomful of Teeth - Ithaca, NY and Syracuse, NY

October 9th - 8PM, Syracuse University as part of the Esther Drake & John Vincert Malgren Concert Series

October 18th - Reprise 1 - Philadelphia

October 18th - 4PM, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

An afternoon concert featuring a new work of Stratis Minakakis (whose Monteverdi Responsories was received so enthusiastically last summer), based on the pentatonic folk tunes and polyphonic practices of northwestern Greece. We will also reprise three commissions by some of The Crossing’s closest friends, and the seminal work of Ēriks Ešenvalds that began our long association with him.

November 7th - Groupmuse - New York City

Elisa performs her first Groupmuse of the season with Conor McDonald and Zalman Kelber. Featuring a blend of well-known opera duets and obscure art song.

December 5th - The Crossing with Al-Bustan - Philadelphia

December 5th - 8PM, Goodheart Hall, Bryn Mawr College

This intriguing collaboration with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, a Philadelphia-based organization dedicated to presenting and teaching Arab culture through the arts and language, will bring cultures together as The Crossing sings in Arabic with one of Lebanon’s most prominent singers, Abeer Nehme.

The Apollo Chorus has been presenting this glorious masterpiece annually since 1879, a track record unmatched in the city of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune hailed Apollo’s performances as a “venerable holiday tradition” performed with “an exultant spirit that came from the heart.” The unparalleled quartet of soloists includes soprano Amanda Majeski, fresh from her acclaimed performances in The Passenger at Lyric Opera.

January 23rd - The Fifth Century - New York City

January 23rd - 7:30PM, St. Paul's Chapel, Trinity Church, Wall Street

To celebrate the release of our all-Bryars recording on ECM Records, we reprise The Fifth Century, Gavin’s elegiac, forty-minute reflection on Thomas Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations. Our audiences were deeply moved by this beautiful work, premiered in 2014, and its masterful interweaving of the colors of saxophones and voices. Our friends at PRISM join us again for this New York premiere.

With Gavin’s Two Love Songs for women and Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits’ Hymns from the Western Coast.

February 10th - 13th - Roomful of Teeth - Storrs, CT, Washington, DC

February 10th - 8PM, University of Connecticut

February 13th - 8PM, Sixth and I Historic Synagogue

Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth joins new music dynamos American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) for a centuries-spanning program of works by Purcell, Bryars, and 2013 Pulitzer-winner and Roomful member Shaw.

April 3rd - Fonema Consort - Brooklyn

April 3rd - 7PM, National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn

Following the driving motivations of Fonema Consort, “Of Tongues” examines various roles and approaches to the voice embraced by contemporary composers, and pays homage to Webern’s vocal music, which even now is a decisive force in shaping the course of new music. The program travels from the thoughtful dissection of a Borges poem in Irene Quero’s Línea, to unbridled dramaturgy in the works of Pablo Chin and Francisco Guerrero; from the purely sonic understanding of phonemes without semantic content in two works by Jason Eckardt; to the spiritual texts that enabled Webern to formalize his use of the twelve-tone method inDrei Lieder. “Of Tongues” ultimately reveals that phonology and semantics are powerful tools to develop expressive musical possibilities. Fonema Consort is honored to perform as part of National Sawdust‘s inaugural season with curator Miranda Cuckson.